Category: time

It starts with alarm.
Armed with a routine, Anorexia gets me out of bed in the mornings to confront them. Anonymous sets about emptying the day.

Act 1, Scene 3: Breakfast.
Everything ticking along nicely: the dishwasher emptied; curtains drawn. Radio 4 humming under an Anonymous monologue. The stage set for a successful breakfast.
Then Dad comes in a line early, and I am thrown.
The door clatters in it’s frame. The kettle groans; teacups clink; a teaspoon heckles me from the sink.
I lost my place in the breakfast script: there was no order to work through to ensure I measured every tablespoon accurately. Now I’m going to be late. Hurry, stop getting in my way. Let me get on with my life.
Cue: an anorexic panic. Insults, agitation –
and so the scene dissolves.

Act 1, Scene 3: Breakfast – take 2.
Everything ticking along nicely: the dishwasher emptied; curtains drawn. Radio 4 humming under an Anonymous monologue. The stage set for a successful breakfast.
Then Dad comes in a line early, and I am thrown.
The door clatters in it’s frame. The kettle groans; teacups clink; a teaspoon heckles me from the sink.
I lost my place in the breakfast script. Now, now what.

A daily grind bores away the day, a day structured to hold up anorexia.
What I’m going to eat later stalks me out of bed.
The breakfast sequence is followed by a string of stills in front of the bathroom mirror. I push the morning through the smaller hours by faffing and floating between rooms, gathering piles of socks and moving them from the bed to the cupboard. Back into a draw.
Time becomes bloated with movement.
I leave the house searching for something to do, somewhere to tip all these unwanted minutes. Sitting in the driver’s seat sends my heart racing, so I manoeuvre within a 25minutes radius. This is my tolerance limit. At traffic lights my legs jig and my back twitches. An angry exorcism of leftover calories is only complete when I am out of the car – standing.
My morning out is carefully choreographed between a narrow spread of aisles, alleys and side streets. Carpark metres, a street sweeper, a window displaying the same set of disguises it had the day before. And the day before that.
Ellie comes up for air for 20mins midmorning. A clash of meal plans and an anorexic plot, in which I have a coffee. I gobble up the extra minutes in situ, and stuff them under the nib of a pen. As I write this, I’m sipping on my regular skinny latte (“Is this definitely skimmed milk?”). I won’t reach the end of this paragraph. I only have a few mouthfuls left. We need to be getting home anyway, or I’ll be late for lunch
Before I eat, there is a 40mins palate cleanser: home, sink, scrub, change, down stairs for a bag, up stairs to replace the bag, downstairs and into the kitchen. Up again for that scarf I deliberately left there, just to squeeze another 14 steps into the day. Food preparation will take up enough standing space to justify hiring out time for lunch.
Are you bored yet? I certainly am.
But wait – the day has barely begun.
The sticky hours between 2 and 3 pass through me reluctantly. The clock hand crawls across it’s face to hide it’s shame. The impossible task of doing nothing: freezing bananas, rearranging the fridge, making trips upstairs with the laundry: half a pile at a time.
Standing up against the tyranny of time.
The final push to the summit of the day: my afternoon walk. Come rain or shine, sleet snow and sorrow: thou shalt roam aimlessly, with nothing to lose but kcal.
(With irony): Another nugget of anorexic wisdom.
It’s downhill from here. A shower washes supper gently down the steep slope of the day. Only then can relief rain between the pages of this notebook.
It is only by achieving anorexia, that I earn the right to write.
Soon, I can put this all to bed. Emptying a day means there is nothing to make dreams out of. Instead, I listen to Ellie snore through Anonymous’ regret at having survived another day in recovery.
Then it’s time to wake up.
How I wish I could ride that snooze button a few minutes longer.
But you can’t Ellie. You’ll be late.

Seconds sank into the mud

Variations on a theme:
Weekends: 9hr shift at restaurant. A workplace routine is already in place.
Hospital clinics: subject to appointment type, doctor and duration. Move walks from pm to am accordingly.

A fluid family life was cut off by my routine. Coming and going with tides of day trips and mealtimes became stuck in the past. Anorexia diluted quality time together and reduced it to drips through the day: the gap between my snack and shower; an cross over around lunchtime.
In this arid loneliness, there is nothing to get in my way. No obstacle that helps inactivity hoard kcal into mounts of kg.You’re in my way. My brother wakes up during the faffing phase and trips me up on my way to the bathroom. My Dad cuts the lawn on a dry afternoon, nuturing irritation into agitation. They abscond my radar and come home without sending out a precautionary text message, so I can plan around their arrival. Noise soaks into the air and makes Anxiety sweat.
They never speak to Ellie during the day, only tolerate Anonymous’ howling if they dare cook themselves a stir fry. The stench of food injures her. Like rubbing salt into a wound.
Billy, stop jumping up. No. No Billy. You cannot come on my walk: your little legs will tire, and why must you stop and sniff so often? Cuddles later Billy, you’re making me late. I’m late for my shower.
His wagging tail slows, and dies. When the day is tired out, there is a slot to cuddle my Billy. It is my favourite time of day.

Daily habits are props for Anorexia.
Reading a newspaper every mealtime gives food a side order of politics and opinion. The BBC and the Times feed productivity levels. I’ll sit at a little table in the laundry room, by the window. I know I won’t be disturbed in there. I’ll have the peace of mind to concentrate on my food and paper.
The washing up must be undone before I start eating, just so Anonymous feels she’s earned her carbs.
That smoothie bowl can’t just look the best: it has to be the best. Something to do with achievement, “some might think”.

Old hobbies were easily killed off by an obsession with exercise.
Broken strings curl around my harp like roots around a coffin.
Books gather dust as I struggle to keep on top of the pile with only 30mins of reading before bed.
If time goes spare and rests back in a chair, it hoards calories.

Beyond these four corners of this life lies recovery: Ellie is sure of it.
I can’t see the point of recovery whilst tripping along in a hunger high, waiting for change to calm shallow storms.
There is no point, only a smooth learning curve.

The challenge for a few months has been to throw pinches of disruption into my day.
Moulding my day around someone else’s plans had me withstanding a painful 20mins drive to meet a friend for a walk, instead of asking her to come here. To save the sitting.
Moving supper back by 45 mins meant I could eat with my family. So far, the calories haven’t surprised my body. As far as we can tell, Ellie hasn’t been tricked into snacking afterwards at all, even if she eats earlier. Huh.
My camera roll has depleted this month: not every meal has been captured and retained for future reference.
I set a timer at 15:02, and buried 15mins between the pages of Zadie Smith. Anonymous found me a whole chapter later.
I checked my phone before 6pm.
In the midst of the perfect breakfast, I let that teaspoon lie.
If I look after the habits, the routine will look after itself.

It was magical.

Here is proof of doing something different: news. A change. This just in: I have been offered a job in a primary school. Yes: I put my anorexic confidence out there. Sat during the interview and everything! I even risked spending a moment sitting, reading through the application forms before 5pm.
How nice to do something that won’t hurt.

At the end of the day, one day, Recovery will work better than anorexia – Time tells me so.
Ellie struggles finding something to live for, in what she lives with.
But at least she is trying. Every exhausted time.

My decision to defer university for another year left devastation in it’s wake. Every day sinks deeper. Loss is a natural disaster, and it has taken a while for grief to catch up. Finally, it has arrived.
When the “whether” broke and the decision dawned on me, the pressure dropped and sucked anxiety away.
In the few days that followed my deferral, Anonymous took cover in the eye of the storm, and let relief rain. Together we watched the waves of anguish build as September approached. The ghost of my leaving date leered.
I wade into another day of Recovery. My reason to eat was washed away, and disorder was left in it’s wake.
It is a storm too big to get over. No, all I can do now is get through it. Slash through each day as it comes. Stand away from the tides of triggers, and wait for it all to pass.

We are all trying to grapple with what has just happened. I have been feeling my way down the levels of grief, gathering my thoughts together. Denial was first to disrupt the calm climate of relief. It passed by in relief: shrugging off questions, and letting distraction shield me from the nip in the air. Realisation froze over in the following week. The sugary rush of relief passed, and now grief craves a home. Somewhere to place this feeling, some direction or purpose.

Here is grief.
Ellie found words with no meaning.
Pages of writing for nobody to read.
Illness there for nothing, but health.
No doubt to eat, no regret to drink. No satiety for the full.
Nothing to make anything from.
A plot lost in the story.

I also found a body. Let us examine this specimen here, in the mirror: where it was first discovered. It was last seen 2kg ago, stumbling across a weight graph towards a hospital admission. Notice it was discovered far from the inpatients unit: it must have endured those 2kg just to escape more intensive treatment. Goodness, it has been through a lot in the short space of two months.
Food complimented Ellie by rushing to the parts she is most proud of. Fat flirts with my face, the weight on my cheeks only trying to make my smile come back. High priority was given to my face in particular: the one that speaks for and represents the brain it cradles. This aid was distributed to protect my brain. I suppose I should feel flattered that Ellie believes this mind is worth protecting.
This weight is incriminating: it proves that in this instance, Anonymous lied. Time blew over what Anorexia blew out of proportion: that extra 2kg didn’t look as horrifying as it should have. Had the scales not pointed it out, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. Of course, now it is obvious. Now, it’s the next 2kg I’m worried out.
The eye of the storm watches me deciding what to do with the body.

Grief broke Recovery’s image: now I see a liar. It told me I would get out if I gained a little weight. Struggling against the tide of grief took kcal..

Anonymous wrapped her arms around my meal plan, and squeezed it tight.
My glass of milk was reduced to a dribble in a cup of tea – decaf – sipped to stretch my “snack” hour out. Nuts rained like bullets into the bin, they were the first casualties in the retreat. Anonymous blocked up all calories leaking in through liquid, resulting in a breakfast drought. Today, she eyed up my yogurt. How many kcal is it worth trying to save, Ellie?
The storm broke, and restriction soaked up the floods of panic. Still, they come in waves. I caught Ellie’s eye wandering, looking at Anorexia in awe.
She’s still got it.

After being pushed into a crowd of emotions, I withdrew. I turned off my phone, I left work after only 2 hours. Still, I couldn’t escape time. It was crushing.

From behind my closed door, Anonymous spied on my family. Ellie progressed backwards and responded only to the adrenaline surge that beat her head against the wall.
Where I couldn’t control my emotions, I controlled my environment. Anonymous counted the calories on my parents plates before she made a meal of preparing her own supper. She caught a whiff of unsolicited cooking – 15:00hrs; 09/09/2017; a slow cooker – and defended herself with venom. The world turned against me, so I turned my head against the wall: one, two, three. Doors that shut with a crack, squeak, sigh cued an anorexic attack.
One, two, three.
Pennies and pins dropped, and cracked through the house like a whip. Kindness and cruelty were made mute, their tongues cut off on eggshells.
The calm after the storm never arrived, the rage just kept building.
One, two, crack –

The paintwork is bruised from where my head hits it. I use the same place every time: the strong and silent type, the sort my parents would never find out about. If it weren’t for the screaming.
Self harm is just another form of grief: just another action that will never have the words to explain itself. The injured character, looking for a victim.

I couldn’t contain Anorexia. There was just so much to manage, and I needed her help. In such turbulent times, the only permanent thing is change.

After the storm, I pieced together an existence for Anorexia to work on, and for Ellie to work with. Sifting through lies, limits and numbers; trying to disorder kcal to reorder kg.
I asked for my job back, and squashed all temptation of university under administration and paperwork.
A dream of other offers a full recovery can offer swam before my eyes. Travel, writing, good books, a different course or different –
wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. I think it is just so Grief doesn’t catch up with me again.

A gathering of thoughts, a triggering job, and Time.
This is what has been left over.
A reason to set an alarm in the morning.

Losing university is just another loss. Another one. What, Ellie, have you got to lose now? What is there left for Change to take away?
Life cannot be this greedy. If I only asked, perhaps it would give something back. Like Time. That slippery, omniscient narrator: the one Anorexia cannot stop. I must spend this time wisely: or else Recovery will run away with it.

I looked back at my decision as it receded. Unshaken, it holds its head up high. It was made right, out of honest reasons for which I am proud of. As are my parents and doctors. I don’t trust my own thoughts because they are infected, but I know this one is clean. Everyone was having it: I’m not ready for university yet. It is not the ned of the world, as it seemed at first. As if the world has any sort of limited to meeting my deadline of returning to university now. No, I just need more time.

This is a blot on my manuscript. A mistake.
Reading over the last two weeks, I can see my characters turn on each other. The narrative changed. It’s nature turned erratic, and I lost my place. I can’t remember where I left Recovery.
This is not how my life was meant to be.

The plot, and Ellie’s blood, thickens.
How empty those words sound, how grievous.

Indecision blew hot and cold. Time became a high pressured patch charged with anxiety. Self harm was up and mood plummeted. Depressive waves met a cold front of determination, causing the “whether” to break down in tears. Days dripped by.
Now, August has melted.
I could feel time rubbing against my thighs. I heard the deadline for my decision wade closer: Ellie, are you going to start university this September?

What to do.

My design of university looks beautiful from afar. Honest strokes of luck and hard work, lines leading to a career and a family. A strong and stable template on which I could rebuild my life. Something to eat for, a reason to get out of bed in the morning. The distance from home would shut my parents out of this ugly world of mental illness: they would no longer have to bear witness and the brunt of Anorexic attacks. The reasons to go are large and strikingly familiar.
University is in fashion. Whilst it is very stylish, it doesn’t suit everyone. Ellie looks at model students and longs to join their ranks. She would like nothing more than to strut through life, degree clad and morally high heeled. Two years into university I was tripped up on the catwalk, because my ambition became too thin to fit freedom. One year into my recovery, I am still hungry for brain food. I am starving for something to think about that hasn’t been soiled by Anorexia’s grubby fingers.
On this blank canvas, Ellie thought she could paint Anonymous out of the picture.

Come closer.

Of course, university looks a bit sickly for an anorexic. Lectures make Ellie salivate; but there are so many calories in sitting for so long, exercising nothing but grey cells. A whiff of vodka on someone else’s breath could make anxiety cough. A bit of a mouthful, but manageable, surely?

Come closer.

I followed my thought patterns, and noticed how they curled away from lectures and the library. Societies were stitched up to my anorexic exercise quota. Independence embroidered the opportunity to make food alone and eat alone. Trainers were shackled to my feet so I could run wild. Rushes of icy sea air stripped calories off my skin. Books were balanced by bargaining hours in the library vs size of meals, and there would be nobody I had to explain myself to. Anonymous measured how much time I’d have between lectures, and began to knit in extra exercise. Anonymous has been scripting how to ask my parents to let me bring my bike. She hasn’t got it quite right yet. We don’t want them to suspect anything.
On this blank canvas, Anonymous has already signed her name.

Anorexia was the skeleton structure. Anonymous built my desire to leave home as soon as she could, long before Ellie was ready. She just wanted to get away: she had a life to get on with. Something to work on; a gym to be in, a schedule to stick to.

Ellie caught me buying my doctor’s and parent’s trust with a forgery of recovery. I know how to make progress seem real. It is so easy to sacrifice a few kg to convince people to let me get on with what I’m doing. A perfect loophole to squeeze Anonymous through. Had I started university again this month, Anonymous would have reaped her reward for waiting.

My recovery is delicate.
It frays at the touch of disorder, and falls to pieces when Anxiety tugs it too hard. The mere thought of sitting in the car for too long caused Ellie’s resilience to split, and my meal plan fell through.
I’ve been collecting material for recovery for over a year, and it still won’t hold. As it is, it is nothing more than straw to clutch at. It won’t stretch to university: it can barely cover the car journey.

At the moment, all I want is to go to university. That is what worries me.Just a little longer. Soon, you won’t have to carry another kcal more than you need to.

Anxiety stirred as I tried to tie together reasons to go. They didn’t feel genuine. It felt me feeling totally unfit to make this decision alone. But I have to. This has to be my decision, or it shall always taste bitter.

Ellie looked everywhere for inspiration on which to base her decision.
Anonymous’ rage wouldn’t listen to a word said against her escape plan. Conversations with my parents were locked down in silence. Anxiety attacks saved Anonymous if anyone dared tread on an eggshell she laid around the topic of deferring. It was a war of attrition.
Last week, I found a piece to add to my decision. A channel 4 documentary on Anorexia spat taboo out into the laps of its audience. Maddy Austin stood before me, living proof that recovery is possible. The camera panned around the very hospital I receive my treatment: one of the best in the country. I am lucky. Ellie, why are you pushing that away?

Accepting my place on a course at the far reaches of the country would move my illness into a dark corner. Depleted staff and funding lurks in the black splodges over the North, the south, east and west. Unlike the rich light that the Surrey NHS basks in, there dark patches are anorexic playgrounds. Illnesses grow and learn without supervision.
I am receiving some of the best treatment the NHS will buy. I am lucky. Even with such intense treatment, I am not ‘well’ enough to fit into anything bigger than size “anorexic”. My current challenge is peeling back the first layer of recovery: the task of restoring weight.

Need support in every sense: guess who bought a bra this week!

Whilst the mirror cracks up as I pass it, and the ground shakes with the weight of an extra strawberry, it is now that I need the most help.
Pushing my increases deeper into fold of time I don’t have makes recovery harden around me.
Who else would tell me to escape support, but an illness?

Every good piece of art raises questions. Of course I questioned something as colourful as university. It simply couldn’t be true that I’d move away and leave Anorexia behind.

Here, in my hands, is my decision. I don’t know what to do with it now, or how to describe it to you.
It turned out to be sensible, just not very pretty. It looks easy from your eyes.
Come closer.
If only you knew the devastation it has caused me since I came to it.
If only you knew how hard it was to take away from Anonymous.
I will not be starting university this September. If I did, I would be saving Anorexia.

I need an extra slice of time.
University is a moveable feast. My recovery is not.
Today, it tastes bitter. I’m just a failing anorexic. My arrangement with Anonymous fell through: I tried so hard, and ate so much – for nothing.

There isn’t room in a single blog post to explain my decision properly. I don’t have enough time, I need more time.
My decision had to be made right. Even a wrong one needed to be made with complete honesty, not with cheap materials like doubt and regret. They are weak resources, and would fall to pieces in days.

I practice making the decision to recover every single day.
I could present you with an archive of finished decisions that have lined my stomach in the last year. Taking a shorter walk; clinging onto a dietary increase even after gaining 0.4kg last week. Leaving Dad’s dirty teaspoon on the side, where he left it, only because Anonymous wanted to scream for him to clean up after himself, for heaven’s sake. Really, Anonymous, what is in a teaspoon?

This feels like the hardest decision I have ever made. Choosing to stay under intensive treatment is choosing to recover: to do exactly what Anonymous fears. What I fear. It is a decision that rests in my hands, and I hold it up to you with pride. Come closer. I just escaped an anorexic trap.

Every morning, I unfold Body Image and examine it in the mirror. The glass fogs up with smoke.
From under piles of leggings and wooly socks, I pick out the same pair of words I wore yesterday, and the day before, and the one before that. They don’t suit each other very well, but they’ve been crammed next to each other in a sentence anyway.
The mirror cracks into a smile, and the girl bulges from side to side through the glass. Anonymous leans in and looks for my new number: she looks to see where that 0.5kg went this week. Damage to Anonymous’ shell dimples my cheeks and plumps out the cushions around my legs. Whispers of health pass by in a curl of strengthened hair. A single blush graffitis a perfect shade of pale.
Anorexia keeps my body caged in an image, and accessorises it with her thoughts, and her judgements. They are narrow and unflattering, fiercely protective of the sharp edges the marks her boney borders.
Ellie looked at the image before her and shook her head, wondering why weight must be in the foreground. It takes up the whole picture: the only hard evidence that recovery is passing through. It just seems so out of proportion. Far too big and taking up far too much space.

I put Body to one side, making sure it was folded up so the creases were as thin as possible. The mirror gaped at what was left of my Image. Ellie, Anonymous, and myself. A gathering of unsavoury characters, and a story full of holes.

I had negotiated a 4 week gap between my hospital assessments, in order to prove that I do not need to be admitted as a day patient into the Eating Disorder Unit. It never occurred to me that I had just dug myself another hole, and found another empty gap to fill.
My plate was piled high with promises: the dietary increases would start tomorrow. The scales would fall away to weight welcomed with pride. Time would crack, and prise Anonymous away from my meal plan. Ellie would testify that she could react to Anxiety in some other way than cutting off her crusts, or watering down a smoothie. For four weeks, Anonymous has had nothing to eat but her own words. Here is the bitten word: weight gain.
Anorexia fed me denial for the first week. Surely, I didn’t need to increase my diet. All this food is far too big, and takes up far too much space. It wouldn’t be real, just a trick of gravity.
-0.1kg.
The second week, I dithered in my comfortable gap between an increase, and an intention. +- 0kg. An anomaly, surely. Ellie had been gnawing around the hull of her strawberries, and licked the spoon twice. Those teaspoons of hummus had been heaped for heaven’s sake. Still, the image flickered on the scales.
The third week, I was pushed into it. Anonymous’ logic was sweet as I ate it, and spat it out. A tablespoon of nut butter melted into my porridge, and it conjured up a miracle. +0.5kg.
Don’t let that slip between your fingers, Ellie.

It is so easy to talk myself out of increases, so I literally have to eat my words.

I unfolded up those numbers, and held them up into the light. Then realised what I was looking at. A gap had opened up between my meal plan and my metabolism. That’s the crack my efforts were falling into.
Ellie closed her eyes, and braced herself. It was so deep, and so dark.

Anxiety has been trying to talk me into staying in this hole, I think. It’s hard to tell, because I don’t ever fully understand what it’s trying to tell me.
When it tries to speak, rational words become strangled, crushed by the pressure of so much emotion climbing upon it from such a height. Change looms up there, and it alarms Anxiety. So it starts making all this noise.
Listen, Ellie. What is Anxiety actually trying to tell you?

My brain hasn’t got the kcal to waste on thinking efficiently. Ellie is so out of practice in dealing with her thoughts, that she ends up over-thinking. This often results in a obsessive surge, and then Reason blacks out. Anxiety has to take over: someone has to reestablish order.
It spat thoughts in my face with every mouthful.
An extra centimetre of cucumber burnt my tongue like acid.
A Times article on the possible – improbable – irreversible damage a whiff of bacon can wreck on metabolism crippled me for days afterwards. I hobbled around work in the coming days, desperately trying to shield my nose from the aromas rising off my customer’s plates.
Suddenly, my legs were being prised open all over again. Food blared between the pages of my magazine. I was catching fat from that person on the train and this person in the queue. An angry, vengeful rash of pregnancies and STIs came back to bite me from the past.
Thoughts gathered together and descended upon me like a mob. Time was chewed up and pressed harder against this four week window. Failure stared straight through me.
Of course Anxiety felt threatened. She was crying out for help. Anorexia is in trouble, she is being exposed.Your friend needs help. She helped you, remember?
Each hour was littered with signs to turn back and retreat into my hole.

There were cracks just waiting to swallow me up as I advanced forward, trembling with fright from the spectre of hospital food.

Looking into the future, Anonymous can already see cracks that will trip me up further down the road to Recovery. That one just there, the one hiding just behind my mirror. And over there, the gap between “weight restored” and “recovered”. That’s a hard fall there: one which nobody cares about, and nobody takes seriously.

Some holes are placed just where Anonymous can trip other people up too.
The space between your mouth and my ears is dangerous. Meaning leaves your tongue with good intentions. Healthy compliments fall ill as they travel over the gap of understanding. When I receive them, they are twisted and tortured into Anorexic weaponry.
It is so easy to offend Anorexia: just remind her she is failing. Just point out she is weak enough to let me get this healthy, to “look so well”. When someone falls into this trap, Ellie gets dragged down too. If we look so “well” at this weight, Ellie, why should you want to gain any more?

Anonymous worries if Ellie looks too happy in a picture.

Anorexia tries to press her image up against your screen, so the gap in your knowledge widens. My social media pages are subject to censorship: she has an image to uphold. She needs to maintain her anomity: it is what keeps her safe.
Let us unfold a few that have been cast out. I wear them well.
Here, a plate of food. Pictures of food: proof of Anorexic failure. Ellie: are you eating solid food yet? This is one hole Ellie wants to explore. I have now set up a ‘sister’ instagram account where I can put pictures up of some of the (very exciting) food I eat. It can be found @eatenbyellie and is designed to add detail to the picture of Ellie, who is recovering. And she is proud of it.

I just want to show off how pretty food is 😉

Ah, what about this one: Ellie wearing something nice. I had dithered in front of the mirror for hours. Shall you wear pretty, or thin? Whichever is more comfortable, or whichever you feel the most confident in.
Any image of me is fed to you in self-defence. Anorexia isn’t cool: it is freezing. And so very lonely. I struggle to see friends who will only have a memory of Anonymous. I am still competing against my own ghost; even if Ellie is so much better than she was.
Please, don’t offend Anonymous. She is my friend, and I trust her.
Scrolling through loneliness and desperation and inadequacy: other people can be blind to what is pictured on a screen. Look for that gap. Can you hear the screaming?

In the mirror, I can see holes in Recovery’s smile. The gap between my assessments made it crack from side to side, and reveal a set of perfectly disordered gaps in my understanding of this illness. Somehow, I fell through a crack.
Nestled in Now: somewhere between the past and the future, I am trying to find a face to pull over this gaping hole. Perhaps covering it up is as inefficient as Anxiety’s communication. It’s just that finding something to fill all these holes summons Fear from the pit of it’s hovel.

Recovery will work with Nothing to make Something, and it will possibly mean Everything. I have learnt that it will possibly be drafted and redrafted, edited, scraped, compared and contrasted with the other side of the gap, the other side of the argument. Always trying to be bigger and better and thinner than the last mouthful of words.
Ellie just needs to keep chewing through the knots of her confusion.
Eventually, Recovery will unfold another image of life beyond maintaining the image of a thin body. Surely, it will be more filling than this morsel of life.
Because this just isn’t Ellie. Anorexia simply isn’t me.

The Eating Disorder Unit smells like burnt toast.
Secure doors throw open and embrace me into the waiting room. Sharp lights, purring phones, the shuffling of paper and slippered feet. And the stench of burnt toast.
A smell so pungent, it wakes the spectre of family breakfasts, flames in our Bombay kitchen and team briefings at the boathouse. I watch ghosts float down the hospital corridors, devouring slice after slice.
I sign my name in at 08:58. The dates have flipped and fallen away above my signature for a whole year. Welcome back, another week. Congratulations, you’ve made it to the end of another week. My Eating Disorder Unit smells like rotting time: it smells like an Anorexic feast.
I leave with lingering panic, and the smell of burnt toast.

Anonymous has stretched out my time in recovery. It has worn thin, and torn away from countless opportunities:
That media company who commissioned me to lead their mental health campaign frayed. I left a deadline dangling, because Anonymous wouldn’t let me sit long enough to produce any work. Torn fragments spent at my desk saw sentences dissolve into nonsense: I couldn’t get my synapses to sync. I was so hungry. Your time is up. Time to move.
That Russell Group University who gave me an unconditional offer, which I now have to turn down. Anonymous wouldn’t let me sit on a train to visit: it was such a long journey.
That job I was offered in a school, which Anonymous turned down in favour of my waitressing job. There is more exercise involved.
That phone call I didn’t pick up because it wasn’t part of my afternoon routine.
That firework display I couldn’t watch, because the cold air began to eat me.
I looked at the date next to my name, and breathed in burning bread.
How much more time are you going to feed to your illness, Ellie?

Anorexia can remember the future, and it is huge. From the archives of a starving brain, she plays out the disaster of weight gain, and relives the horrors of health.
As I eat, my stirring brain starts working thoughts to the surface of it’s wound. These heavy ones are called memories, and they have caused recovery to go stale.

I have been presented with a mouth watering opportunity: attend a coastal university to read English in September. Plump with juicy promise, it would mean I could leave my job, I could move out. I could begin again.
Opportunity ripens, but it is too far to pluck. Time puts heavy pressure on the doubts that are already shaking Ellie from her daze.
I looked at the date next to my name. It’s May. Surely, there must be more to look forward to than my next meal?

This week, Reality has reeled Ellie in after she spent so long delving into Anorexic archives. Here is my reality: I am Anorexic, and I struggle to function on a day to day basis.
I am surviving on rations. My greedy heart steals calories off my tongue so it can rattle blood past hollow bones. White and red specs bubble in plasmatic rhapsody, rushing to the aid of delirious organs. They move with exhaustion. Sometimes they slack, and the pressure drops. My spine screams in osteoporatic rage. I can’t afford to indulge energy on body heat, so my skin cracks and stains purple. My brain is a corrupt and nervous system being ravaged by two warring minds: I don’t see energy again after it disappears into that shrunken space. Anonymous splashes out on lavish panic attacks to celebrate Anxiety, whereas Ellie wastes concentration until it fuses, blowing thoughts out of proportion. Power surges are followed by instant blackouts. Only weight gain is going to solve this, Ellie.

Every whiff of burnt toast is a reminder from Anonymous that I will not restore weight in time to be allowed to leave the clinic. Every rusty note marks another week that I have dragged Anorexia through, and Ellie still hasn’t agreed to put on any more weight.There is still plenty of time for you to get better, Ellie. Her whispering logic echoes in my stomach: one smoothie, and you’ll pile on the weight. I have been listening since January, and haven’t put on any weight since. I still haven’t seen any evidence to support my Anorexic logic.You haven’t earned the right to learn.

Hope is precious, and neither Ellie nor Anonymous want to lose it. Instead they make me gamble away time on an empty promise of the future.
It is true that if I eat, there is a chance I will restore enough weight to be deemed medically fit to start university. It is also true that if I eat I will gain weight, and be left a half-formed but fed body. I will have used up my rationed time and be denied my right to learn.
The face of the future is scarred with this uncertainty, and it’s ugly grimace rattles my recovery to it’s core.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew, Ellie, you’re starving time. I break the day into chunks that are easy to swallow, making it harder to chew over the next one – and choke. This is taking my recovery tactics right back to it’s basics: not trying to reveal what is feeding Anonymous, but rather how to contain her until Ellie is strong enough to take her on.
I don’t have the energy to bear the emotional surge of looking forward, nor have I learnt how to look back without being blinded. Wait Ellie, one day at a time.
In one week alone, I have seen the benefits of moving the horizon closer. Anonymous denied me my smoothie increases since they were prescribed daily. This week, I turned my brain’s energy away from the doomed deadline of weight restoration, and instead focused on finding a small bite-sized win everyday. It has been a delicious week of attritious smoothie glugging.

The smoothie is back the smoothie is back!! (I call this one “GreenGoddess” – that’s me!)

I can’t call what tomorrow’s weigh-in will provoke in Ellie and Anonymous, but that is for tomorrow. I’m just savouring this chunk of today, I must not think about tomorrow yet.

This blog is a collection of small chunks in my recovery. This is not the long story of my battle with Anorexia: that cannot be condensed into a single chapter. Rather, let it be that this is the tale of Ellie, and her win of the week. A manageable moral, not a myth.

I left my clinic last week with the warm smell of burnt toast lingering in my nostrils. The smell of possibility: something so delicious could come in time. Prepare for the best in everyday Ellie, not the worst in the future.
Not university in sight yet, but a smoothie.

We lost the summer. My last memory can be traced back from the first week in May:

“Eleanor Davies, please go to Dr A********** in room 6.”
I tottered around plastered arms and hacking coughs, watching wheezing frames double over in the line of patients snaking around the room. I pulled my coat up to my face and breathed into the fleece. A trickle of warm air kissed my chattering teeth. I shut my eyes and tried to drown the cacophony of wailing and moaning and groaning. I tried to think.
Ellie: what are you going to say? What are you doing here?You are weak.
She had cold eyes. They skated over me once, and a sour smirk unfolded over her lips.You’re a waste of time.
“I just – I can’t – I won’t eat.”Pah.
“I don’t know what to do.”Very convincing.
“I’m flying home in 10 days, I just need some advice. Please help me, I’m frightened.”
Her body shook with the force of that sigh. With pursed lips she began to click, click, click away at her computer. She kicked some scales out from under her desk.Oh look, she is going to weigh us. How predictable.
“45kg.” Not good enough.
“Yes.” Go ahead, cry. See? Nobody cares.
“So … you think you have an ED. What do you want me to do for you? Why won’t you just eat?”Nobody wants to help you.
“I’m scared. I just need to make it through the next 10 days, please help me.”
This doctor looked at me a moment, stretching out time. “HA” her laugh rattled through the chair and into my bones. “Well,” she said, trying to composed herself, “obviously don’t eat any less.”Challenge accepted.
“Well, I could refer you to an Eating Disorder specialist …” Hell no. “… or I can tell you to toughen up.”
We waited. Not good enough. We left.

At 45kg: my legs have finally joined up and I have … a but crack!!

In those 10 days, I lost 6kgs.
It has taken me 6 months to the day to restore the damage done in that doctor’s surgery.Nobody cares, nobody will help you.
My weigh in today clocked on at 45kg. BMI: 14.9.
Time can’t be tempted, but Anorexia can.

I can control time.
It is a power Anonymous fed me in scraps. We made it smaller. Time is a wild thing, but I have been taught how to lock it up in a cage to waste away.
Woozy and drunk on depravity, it shrank with and away from me.
Anorexia tortured time: I was stretched thinner and life was squeezed smaller.
Routine rotted the day. Daylight would crawl from my 4:30 alarm to my midday black coffee, over treadmills and trembles, to the turning of Anonymous’ screw.This will make you strong.

In recovery, I chase time around the clock. I check in at breakfast, lunch, supper. Each day, I am robbing Anonymous of her control over my time.
Recovery tames time so it can be used, not filled.
My days feel small, but are getting fuller, bigger. I can cope with doing more.
I can follow my train of thought just that little bit further; even if time does eventually catch up with me and my mind stumbles into a babbling outburst.
I can think ahead, and plan past the next hour into the next day. I don’t panic quite so often if lunch gets ruined: if I drop a carrot stick or the phone rings. There will be another lunch tomorrow. Tomorrow will happen, because I’ve planned for it.
Time will take me there.

I know time watches me.
Anonymous grooms the clock for opportunity, and makes me move. I still can’t sit still in the day, I still feel her fingernails scratching away at my nerves.
She makes me fill my daylight hours walking, pacing, twitching. Moving from one room to another requires detours up the stairs or around furniture.Jump up. Move. Earn that food. Get through the next few hours.
My job is exhausting. Time spent at work is never compensated on my days off, because I find it difficult to sit still.The bar of activity has been set now. Move.
If I keep myself distracted, the seconds won’t creep up on me.
My job may contrary to medical advice, but it is the reason I have clawed back that lost time.

Celebrating the New Year as it arrived!

Time pushes Ellie through the present because it knows there is freedom in the future.
In small licks, I can taste it. On New Year’s Eve, I stayed up to greet 2017. I watched fireworks, I hugged my friends. Anonymous was collapsed, exhausted from the day’s work, no doubt revelling in the hunger high she had been saving for us to share.
Ellie swallowed her solitude, washed down with supper, and spent an hour with a sparkler in her hand, grinning.

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